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OK, this has nothing to do with whales or conservation. A colleague of ours at the University of St Andrews (in Scotland) recently passed away, and his two beautiful flat-coated retrievers, Hector and Luca, need a new home. Ideally, they’d stay together, but we know that the world isn’t ideal. Hope you don’t mind our […]

In these troubled economic times, scientists are under increasing pressure to (a) demonstrate the value of the services we provide to society, and (b) find creative ways to provide those services at ever-lower cost. Money is scarce, and environmental research is competing for funding with other worthy causes. Because many of the biggest foundations in […]

Larry Pynn is publishing a special, six-part series on the State of the Salish Sea. We are happy for our work to be included. His piece on 18 April addresses an issue that resonates with us: using hydrophones [underwater microphones] to measure ocean noise levels, while simultaneously collecting information on whale presence. We are a […]

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast… a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. […]

Maybe it’s a sign that we’re spending too much time in front of our computers these days, but it’s been fun to post some of our favourite whale & dolphin pictures on Pinterest. Pinterest is a wildly popular and addictive website that allows you to pin, post & share photographs. It has allowed us […]

Happy Leap(s) Year! Here, we call it LEAPS Year, because that’s the snazzy acronym for our dolphin project: Lagenorhynchus Ecology, Abundance and Population Status. This time of year, our dolphin research involves a lot of time in front of the computer. We’re training computers to screen thousands of hours of underwater recordings to detect dolphin calls in […]

Our plan was to spend a quiet year in Scotland. Erin’s making great strides on her PhD on Pacific white-sided dolphins. Rob won a Marie Curie Fellowship to model the effects of noise on whale populations. But MAN! This ended up being one of our busiest years ever. Here are 11 of our highlights of […]